The AMERICAN BASKETBALL LEAGUE played one full season, 1961 –1962 ,
and part of 1962–1963. The league actually folded on December 31,
1962. The ABL was the first basketball league to have a three point
shot for baskets scored far away from the goal. Other rules that set
the league apart were a 30-second shooting clock and a wider free
throw lane —18 feet instead of the standard 12.

In Cleveland, Steinbrenner's coach was the legendary
John McLendon ,
who became the first
African-AmericanAfrican-American coach of a major pro basketball
team. He was hired by Pipers' general manager, Mike Cleary, later the
Executive Director of the National Association of Collegiate Directors
of Athletics. McLendon had several of his star players from Tennessee
State such as John Barnhill and
Ben Warley , plus several former Akron
Wingfoots , such as
Johnny Cox and
Jimmy Darrow , who had won the AAU
National Championship the year before. In a game against the Hawaii
Chiefs, Steinbrenner sold player Grady McCollum to the Chiefs at
halftime. McLendon chafed at Steinbrenner's interference and quit in
midseason, following the team's return from playing in Hawaii.
Steinbrenner immediately named Sharman, from the recently defunct
Jets, as his coach, and the Pipers went on to win the only ABL title
in the league's brief history.

JERRY LUCAS

Steinbrenner signed All-American
Jerry Lucas to a contract worth
$40,000. With the Lucas signing, Steinbrenner had a secret deal with
NBA commissioner
Maurice Podoloff . The Pipers would merge with the
Kansas City Steers and join the NBA. A schedule was printed for the
1963–64 NBA season with the Pipers playing the New York Knicks in
the first game. The gambit worked, but the ABL sued to block the
move, and as a result Steinbrenner had a team and no league. Instead
of returning to the ABL, Steinbrenner folded his tent. This chicanery
masked a series of other ABL moves.

RELOCATION

The
Hawaii Chiefs drew well, but other teams felt the air travel was
prohibitive, resulting in scheduling that saw the Eastern teams
playing all of their games in Hawaii within a 5-6 day period and vice
versa. After that first season, the Chiefs relocated to Long Beach,
California . The San Francisco Saints escaped head-to-head competition
with the newly relocated
San Francisco Warriors by heading to Oakland.
Paul Cohen, who secretly owned the Pittsburgh team as well as
officially owning the Tapers, moved the Tapers again from New York,
where they had been an NABL powerhouse for years, to
PhiladelphiaPhiladelphia ,
where he hoped to fill the void of the move of the Warriors (with Wilt
Chamberlain ) from
PhiladelphiaPhiladelphia to San Francisco.

The radical changes, combined with uneven attendance (although some
teams, such as the
Kansas City Steers , drew well), and no fresh
capital from new owners, caused Saperstein and Cohen to decide to
throw in the towel with the close of 1962 on December 31. The league
that pioneered the three-point shot and the wider foul line (both
eventually adopted by the rest of the basketball world) was gone.
After the ABL folded, Steinbrenner had $125,000 in debts and personal
losses of $2 million.